Category Archives: Chuck’s Blog

Welcome to Chuck’s Place! This is where Chuck Ketchel, LCSW-R, expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Currently, Chuck posts an essay once a week, currently on Tuesdays, along the lines of inner work, psychotherapy, Jungian thought and analysis, shamanism, alchemy, politics, or any theme that makes itself known to him as the most important topic of the week. Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy page.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Collective Energy Burning Through Us All

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Trial by fire…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

An angry God once flooded the Earth in retaliation for broken laws. Afterwards, that God humbly promised to never destroy the Earth again in that way. That power was turned over to humans, which gave rise to  Oppenheimer’s world, the world we now inhabit.

Oppenheimer’s world is the reign of the human ego, with its power to both create and destroy. That great God in the sky transmuted into the High Self, the Spirit in everyone. The challenge today rests in the relationship between ego and its High Self. That relationship is in the midst of trial by fire.

Fire was originally the sole property of the gods. It took the hero, Prometheus, to steal it from the gods and deliver it to the human psyche. That deliverance was the birth of the human ego, in the form of the fire’s light of consciousness, with its ability to see and act beyond the dark control of instinctual unconsciousness.

With knowledge came independence and the ability to choose, create, destroy, dominate and be greedy. Ego has so dismissed its Spirit’s guidance that the Spirit of nature has been called in to adjust and refine the hubris.

The collective unconscious is creating fires in the passionate verbiage of pundits, who in turn are stirring the masses with similar aggressive passions. At the physical level, fires are raging around the globe.

The fiery energy of the collective unconscious is simultaneously burning through physical nature and human nature. This dual expression of fire, within and without, is what Jung called synchronicity, an expression of the psychoid level of reality, where psyche and nature similarly reflect a moment in time, as it reverberates through all of creation.

This is the same action that gives rise to an I Ching reading, where the physical action of throwing of coins creates an image that reflects one’s spiritual predicament, at that very moment in time. The oracle reflects the oneness of Matter and Spirit at a specific moment in time.

The collective energy of nature expresses this oneness, within and without, as it burns through the hubris of ego, which has abused its royal privilege, to restore the rule of the wisdom of the High Self. This is the refining action of the trial by fire we are all now living through.

On an individual level, it is important to notice that this current of collective energy is running through all of us. Be mindful to not get ensnared by this fiery energy, or take it personally, acting it out in your social interactions. Nonetheless, we must apply the fiery light of consciousness to burn through our own defenses and illusions.

All fires require fuel to continue burning. When we don’t throw more fuel on it, it won’t keep burning. When we don’t attach to an illusory story or feeling, we will not be consumed by it.

The fire is burning off all that stands in the way of Spirit truth. To attempt to defensively reason with fire merely fans its flames. Seek refuge in the truth; let others burn their way to it. Some just have to go deeper through the trial-by-burning to get to the truth.

Bring one’s ego into alignment with High Self. Understand that the trial by fire is really the proving ground to mature the ego by burning off its excesses and illusions, and shifting its attention to address the true needs of our Great Collective Spirit Self.

Transfiguring through trial by fire,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Quickening Is Now

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The opening is coming…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Quickening is active labor—rapid, thundering contractions with fetus squeezed in a sealed womb, cervix undilated. This is the current birthing stage of our world, reflected in the climatic, environmental, political and social dimensions of life in Gaia’s womb. This is planet Earth now. No exit, no escape.

The survival instinct defense of the human psyche normalizes these traumatic conditions to maintain stability, the way the body regulates its temperature to the ideal of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of external temperature. This defense automatically distracts us from the truth of our emotional reactions to the tensions of now, enabling us to carry on with a false sense of normalcy.

However, the law of compensation insists that the emotional energy we are spared must be converted and experienced somewhere else. One possibility is in an intense obsession, like a cause that consumes our attention with the energy equivalent to our unfelt feelings.

A variation would be a projection, where we might hate someone; again, with the same quantity of energy we avoid in our projected emotions. Perhaps the most common defense is repression, where the disavowed feeling takes up residence in the body and manifests as a somatic issue, like severe back pain. This is the root of psychosomatic illness.

For a time, Jan’s childhood doctor was Dr. John Sarno. Her grandmother revered him. He was a neighbor and Jan has memories of him making house calls. She still has warm feelings about this humble man to this day.

If you google the question: Who is America’s most famous back doctor, the answer you will receive is, Dr. John Sarno. This gentle, soft spoken, 5’3″ man healed Senator John Harkin, John Stossel, Anne Bancroft and Howard Stern of severe back issues by simply educating them about how the psyche distracts us from repressed feelings by creating physical symptoms.

Dr. Sarno’s main treatment was to have his patients read his book Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. For 95% of Dr. Sarno’s patients the knowledge alone of this automatic defensive operation led to a cure.  The remaining 5% he referred to a psychotherapist to address repressed trauma. I would strongly recommend the documentary, All the Rage: Saved by Sarno for an in-depth exposition of his method.*

I emphasize Dr. Sarno’s work here to suggest that we, the people of the world, are most likely being spared the full impact of our emotional reactions to the hair-trigger, eve-of-destruction, state of the world we live in, through converted somatic distractions. This knowledge alone, as Dr. Sarno discovered, may be enough to relieve psychosomatic symptoms in many cases.

To enhance the effectiveness of this knowledge we can make the suggestion to the subconscious to not displace our emotions, but, to the contrary, to deliver us directly our feelings. To acknowledge the truth, and allow ourselves to feel, relieves the body of the tensions that generate the tightness and constriction in our muscles, tendons and nerves, giving rise to many medical diagnoses.

The deeper truth that we might consider is the condition I opened this post with, what Stan Grof has labeled Basic Perinatal Matrix II. BPM II is the no-exit stage of active labor, prior to cervix dilation. Gaia is birthing a new world and we are all part of it, cells of that fetus, currently feeling the terror of extreme contraction, constriction and annihilation. These contractions are real, but they are just that, contractions promising new life.

The impact of our extreme containment is actually facilitating the gradual opening that will birth forth a new world in harmony with the truth.

Best advice for this time is to be aligned inwardly with the truth of the heart and, as they teach in birthing classes: Just Breathe!

Breathing in truth,
Chuck

Please Note: As Dr. Sarno always advised, anyone dealing with physical symptoms should avail themselves of conventional medical consultation.

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Chuck’s Place: The Art Of Wholeness

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Transformation from within…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Inner alchemy is the art of creating a fulfilled life that encompasses, unites and transcends all the polarities within the Self. This state of unified wholeness requires several steps to achieve.

The first stage involves the breakdown and dissolution of our current state of being. Truthfully, we are always in a state of wholeness, as we are always all that we are. At issue is the state of balance our wholeness is in.

For example, suffering a painful backache could be a displaced psychosomatic exchange for repressed feelings of sadness. Here, balance is achieved through the experience of emotional pain converted to physical pain.

Caroline Elliot’s Existential Kink playfully explores the many personality kinks hidden in the shadow of the self, which serve to balance the dominance of one-sided conscious attitudes. I recommend exploring her work to reveal the kinks that might be disrupting personal balance.

The current state of our world reflects extremely volatile states of balance that are serving the breakdown and dissolution of the world as we have known it. The primary elements of fire, water, earth and air are all engaged in environmental extremes that are insisting upon a new way of living that can usher in a sustainable balance. This breakdown of what has been is the essential first step toward new life.

Inwardly, breakdown of the ruling attitude in the psyche is the essential first step to new life. Often this can take the form of an immobilizing depression that refuses to fund our ability to experience ourselves, and life, in our familiar comfort zone. Such a withdrawal of life energy prompts the need for a soul retrieval; that is, a journey into the unconscious to discover and recover unknown or lost parts of the self, the building blocks for new life.

The second stage in the art of wholeness is the untangling and separation of opposites within the self. This is the stage of know thyself, with detachment; that is, not identifying with a one-sided feeling, attitude or judgment that precludes a broader inclusion of all parts of self.

The separation phase is dramatically reflected in the absolute polarization of citizens throughout the world into black and white one-sided attitudes. This stage of separation is still heavily intertwined with the breakdown phase, as people are blinded by projections that would have them resolve imbalance through the elimination of those who oppose them. This was Hitler’s final solution to the challenge of opposition.

Inwardly, this state of separation can result in a state of mental cruelty, with negative critical thinking constantly judging and putting the self down. Nonetheless, if one can hone this reflective impetus into objective introspection, one can arrive at a state of clarity that prepares the way for new union.

Dispassionate knowing and acceptance of the truth offer preparation for a new union of elements within the self, the third stage, in which a new worldview or ruling attitude achieves a durable balance.

This stage is represented symbolically in the conjugal union of the opposites of man and woman. The mixture of these elements will ultimately result in the creation of a child, which presents a life that has incorporated the opposites of its parents into its own unique wholeness. As I discussed in my blog last week, a child in dreams often reflects this alchemy within, seeking to find its way to birth into life.

Hold the perspective that the chaos and separation both within and without are necessary stages in the art of wholeness. Ancient alchemists performed their operations within a sealed retort, allowing the contained energies themselves to facilitate the process of transformation.

In our day and age, containment socially would mean not engaging in heated interchange, but striving to arrive at detachment and truth within.

Similarly, containment within is best served through detachment from mental cruelty, as the point is to transform the old attitudes and thoughts into a newly sincere commitment to know and serve only the truth.

Contained within,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Regeneration, Renewal & New Life

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It’s all about New Life…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Two very common dream scenarios, related to new life, are encounters with snakes and with children, which I will explore separately.

Snakes molt. They regenerate by letting go of their old skin, literally. To be bitten by a snake or chased by a snake in a dream, or to house a snake beneath the floorboards of one’s dream home all herald the message that it’s time to let go of an attitude, belief, or habit that has been dominating one’s life.

Snakes seek a remote, hidden locale that allows for total exposure to the heat of the sun to facilitate the release of old encasement. Our world is now heating to record levels, forcing humankind to let go of old ways of living.

The sun, our ultimate source of light on Earth, symbolizes the penetrating light of consciousness we apply to discern truth. The truth is the stuff of the new skin that will contain us as we shift into new life.

Arriving at truth is like lying in the sun, relaxing in a fixed posture, allowing the rays of the sun to penetrate our rigidity, as we soften and receive its transformative impetus.

The release of old attitudes and attachments allows the crusted-over energy of our old skin to be revamped and redeployed for new life. Letting go is a breakdown phase that does require the destruction of beliefs that have served in the past but no longer promote new life.

The universal symbol for new life is the child. Whenever children appear in our dreams, some part of our unborn self is seeking to come to life.

Carl Jung was careful to point out that the shadow in the human psyche is both a place of repressed experience but, more fundamentally, is also the home of our unfolding inherent self. There are parts of our core seed self that may not be ready to be born in our human life until we are well into the second half of life.

If your actual child appears in a dream, the dream might refer to your child but more likely it refers to a quality of that child seeking to evolve within your own self. Pregnancy in a dream, however unrealistic to waking life, strongly hints at the coming birth of new life and new potential.

Too often, we are apt to interpret the appearance of our child self in our dreams to mean our actual inner child. This then associates to childhood, with its focus on trauma and unmet needs, that beckons ego, or someone else, to take better care of its neglected inner child. Though of course this might be true, more likely the child might represent a vital potential within one’s core seeking to find its way into life.

The Greek god Kronos was the father of Zeus. Kronos had the habit of eating his newly born children to ensure his safety and continued rule. Kronos operates in all of us through our judgments and attitudes that refuse the change into new life. Eating the children can take the form of entrenched habit that disregards any new possibilities that contradict one’s ruling beliefs.

“The King is dead, long live the King!” This cry expresses the necessity for the ruling, anachronistic attitudes in the psyche to die for the new King to emerge and bring new life to the personality. This is the true fountain of youth.

When we heed the call of the snake to allow for the breakdown and letting go of Kronos, we open the way for the innocence of the child to be born, as we regenerate, renew and become new life.

Molting,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Archetype, Reason & Heart

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Nature, ego, spirit aligned…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Archetypes are nature’s crowning achievement. Our ability to survive is rooted in the activation of these evolutionarily sound, instinctual patterns of behavior etched in the fabric of the subconscious mind. Before humans had consciousness, with its ability to reason and make decisions, the automatic subconscious mind was the center of human decision making.

The guiding principle for the subconscious mind is association. If my senses detect a loud sound in the woods, images of a falling tree or an exploded firearm immediately come to mind. The subconscious associates the images to the sound, as action hormones are released in the body, which push for cautious investigative action.

With the birth of consciousness I can rationalize, that is, think about, the sound, and talk myself out of the need to investigate. My conscious will can subvert the subconscious story and call to action. Of course, through this suppression of the subconscious, a part of my mind may remain unsettled, but, as compared to primitive humans, I am not obsessively controlled by the absolute rule of the archetype.

Reason’s growing hegemony over the human mind is an evolutionary exercise that has produced mixed blessings. Scientists have proposed that we are now in a new geologic time period, which they are calling the anthropocene epoch, highlighting the overarching impact of human decision making upon the Earth.

It could certainly be argued, as does the Garden of Eden myth, that human beings should never have stolen access to the fruit of the tree of knowledge and instead stayed obediently within the rules and laws of the godly archetypes.

The subconscious, had it remained in total control, would never have allowed the kinds of duplicitous decisions that ego has made during its reign as CEO of the planet. The subconscious rules with the intention of survival. When it acts upon a suggestion, that suggestion has impressed it with its utility, due to its frequency of appearance.

Reason, of course, would argue that evolutionary patterns can be cumbersome and non-related to the challenges of modern life. Despite some truth to this argument, reason itself has been unable to use pure reason as a basis for environmental decisions. In effect, reason has acted like an imperious child, holding the keys to the kingdom in its own self-righteous hands.

The subconscious is the section of the mind where spirit and matter mate. From spirit issues a dynamic suggestion in the form of a word. The subconscious mind opens to receive the word, which it then magnetizes to attract matter and give birth to spirit’s intent in physical form. From this union, the word literally becomes flesh.

The will of ego can, and does, impress its suggestions upon the subconscious mind, subverting its creative potential for its own self-interest alone. The speed of communications nowadays, through social media, flood the collective subconscious with suggestions that are literally generating alternative realities, which are grounded only in the fact of their repetitive frequency.

In the meantime, the archetypes that once balanced the Earth’s ecosystem are flagrantly misfiring, or are being pitted against each other in battles for dominance. Who, for instance, defines modern masculinity? Are ancient archetypal patterns relevant to being a man? Should reason dictate the curriculum of identity?

The subconscious and reason are reconcilable partners. The bridge to this partnership is objective truth. The subconscious might very well be the most powerful section of the mind, but, by lacking critical thinking, it can be manipulated for less than positive intentions.

The ego has free will, its crowning achievement, but it lacks the ethical grounding to do the right thing. The home of truth is the heart. The Egyptian Goddess Maat is the Goddess of Truth, Law and Justice. Upon death, a person’s heart was weighed against her feather. Only a heart weighing less than the feather was a pure heart.

A pure heart, one that tells the truth, can weigh both the appropriateness of ego’s reason and a suggestion posed to the subconscious. Decisions from the heart center elevate the subconscious and the ego to be in alignment with the true needs of the Self, and the planet as a whole.

As individuals, we are most responsible when we bring heart to weigh upon the validity of our thoughts and the appropriateness of our instincts and impulses.

From the heart,
Chuck